Frostpunk: Best Build for Automatons & Automation

The easiest way to succeed in Frostpunk and beat the final storm would be using multiple Automatons. Unfortunately, they’re quite expensive to build, costing 100 Wood, 100 Steel, 50 Coal and 1 Steam Core.

You can bring these costs down later on, by researching into some new technologies. By researching into some other technologies, you can also increase how efficient the Automatons are, including where they work and how many resources they will gather.

In this post, we’re going to show you some of the best laws, technologies and uses for automatons in Frostpunk. You can read more Frostpunk guides here.

How to get Automatons

You can get your first automaton relatively early on into the game, whether you are playing the New Home or The Arks scenario. We covered how to find these free automatons here, giving the locations for expeditions.

Later on, you can craft your own automatons by building a factory and placing some engineers inside. You can create 1 automaton from 100 Steel, 100 Wood, 50 Coal and 1 steam core. These are the amount of resources needed straight away, with them being reduced later.

Unlocking the factory highly depends on what scenario you are currently playing. If you’re playing A New Home, you will need to research the technology. Whilst The Arks players will need to find the plans.

Steam Cores can’t be crafted, and must be found on expeditions. When sending teams out, don’t let them carry on with too many resources. If your scout team reach a situation where they could fail, you will lose all of their equipment. It’s faster to send scouts to already visited outposts on the way to a new destination, this will massively increase how fast scout teams can travel.

The Factory interface, where you can create your own Automatons

Best technology to research

The main tree that covers automatons is ‘Exploration & Industry’. You will find a lot of useful things to research in here. You should prioritise them in the following order:

Factory: Allows you to create your own Automatons & Prosthesis.

Streamlined Automatons: Automatons will cost 20 less wood and steel to make.

Automation Integration: Makes Automatons 10% more efficient.

Engineer Automatons: Allows Automatons to be used in Workshops & Factories.

That is just the order I recommend, you don’t have to follow it. Make sure to research other technologies such as heating in between. Once you have unlocked Engineer Automatons, you can assign automatons to work in your Workshop. This means that you can research new technology 24/7. I advise you work towards this as fast as possible, as makes surviving the final storm much easier.

Using Automatons to their maximum efficiency

Now that you know how to get new automatons and how to upgrade them, lets talk about how many you need and what you should do with them. By the time the storm hits, I recommend you have at least 5 automatons.

You want to have 1 on each coal mine, ensuring you have a constant income of Coal. Build resource depots to ensure you have enough space to carry it all, and research ‘Resource Depot Upgrade’ under the resources section to increase storage space.

I also recommend you have another automation on each Steel and Wood resource, whether they be mining drills or steelworks. Again, it means you can have a constant supply of Wood and Steel without your workers having to get cold.

As mentioned above, also have one sitting on the workshop at all times so that you can research technology constantly, without having to take breaks in between. Towards the end of the storm, if you think you have enough resources stockpiled, shove the automatons onto your medical posts and infirmaries to keep the sick healed!

Original founder and main writer of PwrDown. I'm a huge Movie and TV enthusiast, with a lot of interest in the Thrillers & Mysteries. I'm also an avid gamer, enjoying games such as Fallout 4 & League of Legends. I write guides for games that are out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One!